Orientalist Reveries: the Visual Representations and Appropriations of the ‘Arabian’ Space by the Non-Muslim Male Traveller - from Travel Literature to Photography and Contemporary Fashion imagery

In this body of research and original photographic work to which it responds, I examine the position and connotation of the ‘Arabian’ as location in travel literature, photography and fashion photography; the subject and image of the figure of the Western male and female traveler in the ‘Arabian’ space; and how traveler and space feed off one another. The research aims to consider the visual representation of cities of the Islamic world, and the specific propositions of locations such as Istanbul, Marrakesh and Cairo as sensual, nightmarish, dangerous and alien. It will focus on the long association between travel and sexual adventure and explore the illusive representation of the male traveler compared to the female tourist as subjects in these cities by examining the appropriation of such figures and motifs from art and literature into contemporary photography of travel and fashion photography. The paper will provide an overview of the romantic fascination with the ‘Arabian’ that writers and photographers share, and the dichotomies in these artists’ rendition of the ‘Arabian’ space and visual culture. The starting point for this paper are two photography monographs by Western male travellers/photographers shooting photographic bodies of work in a foreign Islamic country: Paul Bowles' How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert (1994) and Harry Gruyaert’s Morocco (1990). By focusing on the figure of the male traveler, and incorporating underlying references to the male-dominated shady underworlds the ‘Arabian’ space supposedly inhabits, the work investigates the role that photography has played in the development of such representations: how does the traveler/photographer observe both himself and others and what kinds of relationships and tensions develop between the traveler/photographer and the cities he observes? The discussion will consider case studies from literature (Peter Mayne, Elias Canetti, Paul Bowles); photography (Harry Gruyaert, Irving Penn, Daido Moriyama), as well as contemporary fashion editorial work (William Klein, Jack Pierson, Azim Haidaryan, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Steven Meisel and Daniel Riera), establishing links between the visual representation of travel and the context of gender and personal identity, sexuality and the psychological dimension of exile.